of these cases. In calling the Unknowable a pure negation, I spoke from the standpoint of Religion, not of Metaphysics. It may be a logical postulate, but that of which we can know nothing, and of which we can form no conception, I shall continue to call a pure negation, as an object of worship, even if I am told (as I now am) that it is that "by which all things are created and sustained." Such is the view of Sir James Stephen, and of every other critic who has joined in this discussion.
With respect to Dean Mansel I made no mistake; the mistake is Mr. Spencer's—not mine. I said that of all modern theologians the Dean came the nearest to him. As we all know, in "First Principles" Mr. Spencer quotes and adopts four pages from Mansel's "Bampton Lectures." But I said "there is a gulf which separates even his all-negative deity from Mr. Spencer's impersonal, unconscious, unthinking, and unthinkable Energy." Mr. Spencer says that I misrepresent him and transpose his doctrine and Mansel's, because he regards the Absolute as positive and the Dean regarded it as negative. If Mr. Spencer will look at my words again, he will see that I was speaking of Mansel's Theology, not of his Ontology. I said "diety" not the Absolute. Mansel, as a metaphysician, no doubt spoke of the Absolute as a negative, whilst Mr. Spencer speaks of it as positive. But Mansel's idea of deity is personal, whilst Mr. Spencer's Energy is not personal. That is strictly accurate. Dean Mansel's words are, "it is our duty to think of God as personal;" Mr. Spencer's words are, "duty requires us neither to affirm nor to deny personality" of the Unknown Cause. That is to say, the Dean called his First Cause God; Mr. Spencer prefers to call it Energy. Both describe this First Cause negatively; but whilst the Dean calls it a Person, Mr. Spencer will not say that it is person, conscious, or thinking. Mr, Spencer's impression then that I misrepresented him in this matter is simply his own rather hasty reading of my words.
It is quite legitimate in a question of religion and an object of worship to speak of this Unknowable Energy, described as Mr. Spencer describes it, as "impersonal, unconscious, unthinking, and unthinkable," The distinction that, since we neither affirm nor deny of it personality, consciousness, or thought, it is not therefore impersonal, is a metaphysical subtlety. That which can not be presented in terms of human consciousness is neither personal, conscious, nor thinking, but properly unthinkable. To the ordinary mind it is a logical formula, it is apart from man, it is impersonal and unconscious. And to tell us that this conundrum is "the power which manifests itself in consciousness," that man and the world are but its products and manifestations, that it may have (for aught we know) something higher than personality and something grander than intelligence, is to talk theologico-metaphysical jargon, but is not to give the average man and woman any positive idea at all, and certainly not a religious idea.
